Don’t forget the version of the Sequels… that were novels (back in 1999):-
In 1999, an interview with George Lucas in Wired magazine, titled ‘Grand Illusion’… just a few months before the ‘Vector Prime’ book (from the ‘New Jedi Order’ series of novels) - began being heavily promoted (with tv advert and poster campaigns), a series of novels which Lucas himself was involved in and contributed to…
Interviewer: “What about the reports that Episodes 7, 8, and 9 - which exist in novel form - will never reach the screen?”
George Lucas: “The sequels were never really going to get made anyway, unlike 1, 2, and 3, where the stories have existed for 20 years. The idea of 7, 8, and 9 actually came from people asking me about sequels, and I said, “I don’t know. Maybe someday.” Then when the licensing people came and asked, “Can we do novels?” I said do sequels, because I’ll probably never do sequels.”
^ Grand Illusion - the full article at Wired.
A little more background info can be found here:-
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsEU/comments/hr1tnz/behind_the_scenes_the_making_of_the_new_jedi
For some reason , I am unable to see that article on reddit at that link . Sounded interesting from the comments . Was it removed , or is there a back up link ? or conversely , could you post the text of the article here ?